Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Dax Legend 01-02-05, 10:19 PM	A wizard have no spell left in memory, but want to cast a spell from his spellbook, like a scroll... What is happening, and how it work. Does the spell will be erased from the spellbook like a scroll, or it take longer time to cast and still in the spellbook??
deadDMwalking 01-02-05, 10:34 PM	Officially, it cannot be done. A wizard cannot cast a spell "from" a spellbook. The closest approximation is that if they leave a spell slot open, they can cast a spell after 15 minutes of preparation. Now, if you are the DM and would like to create a system that allows a wizard to cast from a spellbook, I think that is fine. If you allow it, I suggest requiring a full-round action that provokes attacks of opportunity. The caster must succeed on a Spellcraft check as if they were trying to "learn" the spell, +5 (or +10 if you are mean). If they succeed, the spell is cast. If they fail by 5 or more, they suffer a mishap (like a scroll). In any case, the spell is erased from the spellbook as though it were a scroll. Please note that this will make captured spellbooks much more useful and powerful than they currently are. Adjust treasure rewards down to compensate.
Zetakya 01-02-05, 10:39 PM	what he said related idea is to get a blank spellbook and inscribe every page with scrollspells, instead of the spell notes (which, officially, is what a normal spellbook contains - not the active form of the spell, but the notes to prepare it). If you did that, you would essentially have a book of scrolls - and a big hole where all your XP had gone :P
Bringslite 01-02-05, 10:48 PM	I don't believe that there are any rules in the books for this. It sounds like a bad idea though. It would make the spell book into a book of scrolls. Then, you would have to answer the question: can a wizard memorize spells from scrolls without using them up?
penchant 01-03-05, 01:19 AM	This is what we had done when we were playing 2nd edition. Since you could scribe a scroll into your spell book and study it, you could study a scroll and learn the spell. So why not have them be one and the same? I don't understand why it takes XP to make a scroll in the first place. I mean considering the time it takes to create a scroll, you aren't exactly going to make millions of them. You can't unbalance a game by having tons of scrolls of spells you can cast anyway. It's unreasonable. As we played it you have to make your spellbook out of exceptional materials, and use exceptional inks. You were essentially making scrolls when you did this and the same costs applied. When you decided to burn a spell from your book, it went up in flames as you used it and, yes its gone forever if you don't have a backup spell book.
Superpreneurs 01-03-05, 03:10 AM	To elaborate on an earlier poster's response... Spellbooks for wizards contain how to PREPARE and MEMORIZE the spell - basically, casting a spell is a VERY difficult process, and the wizard more or less spends ages casting it - but stops just short of actually unleashing that energy. In 2nd Edition I think it's 10 mins/spell level - not sure about 3rd edition. Anyway, the difference with a spell scroll is that it is almost ready to go. All the preparation has been done. Think of it as a wand. THAT is why it costs XP - it's pretty ******* draining on a Wizard to 1) cast the spell and 2) put an enchantment on it so it's ready for use at any time BUT he doesn't have to memorize it. So a spellbook is a TOTALLY different thing from a spell SCROLL. When a wizard casts a memorized spell, he "unleashes" his STORED energy - which would be pretty taxing, which explains why 1st level wizards (who have studied for years are VERY familiar with the arcane arts) can only cast a few minor spells a day. A scroll also is "stored" energy - so when the Wizard uses it, it is erased from the storage place - instead of his mind, the scroll itself. Hope that makes sense. -Dan
penchant 01-03-05, 03:14 AM	If that is the case then you would not be able to find a scroll and scribe it into your book. Have they changed that in 3e? As I recall, you could always get a spell from a scroll and put it in your book.
75RD Drum Clip 01-03-05, 03:19 AM	IMC, I let a wizard cast from the spellbook, the cost being, losing the spell from their book.
Superpreneurs 01-03-05, 03:26 AM	From what I understand a Wizard "translates" the spell from its "raw" form to a whole spell - reverse engineering if you will. However, story mechanics aside, if you DO allow your players to cast from spellbooks you will be playing with fire. It's not too bad if you're a hard DM, but new DMs can lose it quick. At least make the prerequisite the scroll is used in the process. Or else every battle becomes an un-ending magic-a-thon. "Greg, it's your turn, what do you do?" "Hmm... I'd have to say... Cast a Meteor Swarm!" - Dan
TLomon 01-03-05, 04:25 PM	My players thought my idea on handling this is brutal, but fair. First, the spellbook is prepared in a method much simpliar then that of a scroll. When creating a scroll, you are using ink infused with magic to grant that scroll the power. A scroll disintigrates upon use. When casting a spell from a spellbook, that ink is not used. As such, the spells burn out of the book, and have Spell Level * d4 additional pages burned (half in front of the spell, half in back). Casting directly from a spellbook is a brutal proposition.
eRaz0r 01-03-05, 08:38 PM	Don't know why I'd bother, actually. The spellbook is vastly more useful as a spellbook than as a book of scrolls. Why? Because you don't have to scribe that spell into your own spellbook, you just need a decent Spellcraft skill. The DC to prepare a spell from a captured spellbook is 15+spell level, right ? And there's nothing to say you can't take 10 on that, now is there ? So with a Spellcraft check of +14, you'll never need to bother with copying spells from a captured spellbook again... IMHO, that's more useful than a scroll by far.
MageofMyth 01-04-05, 03:58 PM	Don't know why I'd bother, actually. The spellbook is vastly more useful as a spellbook than as a book of scrolls. Why? Because you don't have to scribe that spell into your own spellbook, you just need a decent Spellcraft skill. The DC to prepare a spell from a captured spellbook is 15+spell level, right ? And there's nothing to say you can't take 10 on that, now is there ? So with a Spellcraft check of +14, you'll never need to bother with copying spells from a captured spellbook again... IMHO, that's more useful than a scroll by far. I was under the impression that preparing a spell from a scroll used the scroll up. Making your book of scrolls a one-shot per page way to memorize spells.
Arca 01-04-05, 05:01 PM	If I allowed the mage to cast from the book I'd make the casting time something along the lines of 5-10 minutes per spell level. Memorized spells and scrolls are both almost done (as has been mentioned previously), requiring very little to finish the casting. The spells in the book are just recipes, if you will, nothing's been done yet. I could go into a whole cookie analogy, but I'll suppress the urge. Sure, if they have nothing but time to kill they can cast spells from the book, but it's hardly a combat option. A large time penalty should also prohibit this method being used for buff spells and the like. I see this sort of option being used in lieu of the general use scrolls that well prepared mages are always making "just in case", but never of any use in critical situations. My opinion, of course, take what you will.
eRaz0r 01-06-05, 12:36 PM	I was under the impression that preparing a spell from a scroll used the scroll up. Making your book of scrolls a one-shot per page way to memorize spells. I don't believe you can use a scroll to "prepare" a spell into your memory. Why would one bother? The utility of the scroll is that you don't have to use up one of your own spell slots for it. You cast the spell right off the scroll without preparation. Then the scroll is gone, expended, Kaput ! Which is why an actual spellbook is more useful than a "book of scrolls" : because a spell in the spellbook is re-usable. You need to decipher it and then use Spellcraft to prepare it (remember, Prepare != "Cast from") but with the relatively low DC of 15+spell level, most mages will have little trouble preparing spells from captured spellbooks. They most certainly cannot cast directly from the book (just as they can't cast directly from their own spellbook) without a house rule. Even given such a house rule, I most assuredly would not be squandering captured spellbooks as if they were a book of one-off scrolls, because, unlike actual scrolls, one can use them over and over. And since you're a Wizard, you have Scribe Scroll as a free feat at 1st level. So you can take that spellbook and prepare that spell in your mind and then use that to scribe a scroll. So really, such a house rule is completely unnecessary.
Furion Thamior 01-06-05, 01:20 PM	Well, considering that it takes 1 hour to prepare spells from a spellbook, perhaps 1minute/ spell level as a casting time is more accurate. If the mage takes a hit, they must make a concentration check, or they lose the spell. This would make it a viable tactic for say, a battlefield, where the mage can be protected by many soldiers and has the time to spend casting the spells. The 'burning pages out of a spellbook' idea is also interesting for a climatic encounter against a desperate mage with nothing to lose....
Sildatorak 01-06-05, 01:23 PM	From 2e on (and quite likely before that also, but that is outside of my area of expertise), a spellbook cannot be used as a spell scroll unless a house rule is in play and a scroll cannot be copied directly into a spell book or used to memorize spells. I'm not trying to knock houserules that allow those things, I'm just stating what the rules say. In 2e, copying a scroll to your spellbook followed the spell research rules but made it so that the research took the minimum time and cost (1 week/level and 100 gp/level in addition to the cost per page to write it in your book, IIRC). In 3e it is 100 gp/page to copy a scroll to a spellbook format, which is probably closer to a direct copying, but still means that you can't just memorize a spell off of a scroll.